know." She consented, and they marched off. Hattie
also arose, and took her parasol, as if to follow, but Charley remained
seated, tracing mysterious diagrams upon the table-cloth with his fork,
and looked sublimely unconscious.

"Sha'n't we walk, too?" Hattie asked.

"Oh, why, the fact is," said he, hesitatingly, "I--I sprained my ankle
getting out of that confounded boat, so I don't feel much like
exercising just now."

The young girl's face expressed concern.

"That is too bad! Why didn't you tell us of it before? Is it painful?
I'm so sorry!"

"N-no--it doesn't hurt much. I dare say it will be all right in a
minute. And then--I'd just as soon stay here--with you--as to walk
anywhere."

This very tenderly, with a little sigh.

Hattie sat down again, and began to talk to this factitious cripple in
the pleasant, purring way some damsels have, about the joys of the
sea-shore, the happy summer that was, alas! drawing to a close, her own
enjoyment of life, and kindred topics, till Charley saw an excellent
opportunity to interrupt with some aspirations of his own, which, he
averred, must be realized before his life would be considered a
satisfactory success.

If you had ever been placed in analogous circumstances, you know, of
course, just about the sort of thing that was being said by the two
gentlemen at nearly the same moment: Ned, loitering slowly along the
sands with Laura on his arm, and Charley, stretched in indolent
picturesqueness upon the rocks, with Hattie sitting beside him. If you
do not know from experience, ask any candid friend who has been through
the form and ceremony of an orthodox proposal.

When the pedestrians returned the two couples looked very hard at each
other. All were smiling and complacent, but devoid of any strange or
unusual expression. Indeed, the countenance is subject to such severe
education, in good society, that one almost always looks smiling and
complacent. Demonstration is not fashionable, and a man must preserve
the same demeanor over the loss of a wife or a glove-button, over the
gift of a heart's whole devotion or a bundle of cigars. Under all these
visitations the complacent smile is in favor as the neatest, most
serviceable, and convenient form of non-committalism.

The sun was approaching the blue range of misty hills that bounded the
mainland swamps by this time; so the skipper was signalled, the dinner
paraphernalia gathered up, and the party were soon _en rout